We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.

Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably.

In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in flashes. The text is the thunder rolling long afterward.

Man is the namer; by this we recognize that through him pure language speaks. All nature, insofar as it communicates itself, communicates itself in language, and so finally in man. Hence, he is the lord of nature and can give names to things. Only through the linguistic being of things can he get beyond himself and attain knowledge of them-in the name. God's creation is completed when things receive their names from man, from whom in name language alone speaks.

Literature tells very little to those who understand it.

To the lover the loved one always appears as solitary.

Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written.